A Conversation with Adams 50
Last week I had the opportunity to meet with part of the Adams 50 leadership team: Oliver Grenham, Chief Education Officer; Jeni Gotto, Director of Assessment and Instructional Technology, and Steve...
View ArticleMore On Implementation in Maine
Thanks to the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Maine Department of Education was able to conduct a number of case studies on district implementation. The studies are great reading and raise a...
View ArticleWhere is the Love? Leading transformational change, beyond information and...
Last December I was at a conference sponsored by the Maine Principals Association and the keynote speaker was Dr. Anthony Muhammad. The topic was building and changing your school culture. As I...
View ArticleUpcoming: Adams 50 Tells Their Story
REL Central has organized a webinar Competency-Based Education Systems: One Colorado School District’s Experience at which leadership from Adams County School District 50, fondly known as Adams 50,...
View ArticleHow a District Ended Student Dropouts with Personalized Learning
This post originally published on EdSurge. Author Roger Cook is the Superintendent of the Taylor County School District in Campbellsville, Kentucky. Imagine, if you can, a school where students do not...
View ArticleBuilding a Bridge Between Blended Learning and Competency Education
A big light went on during a conversation with Anthony Kim of Education Elements: WHAT IF… The process used by districts that already use blended learning to transition to competency education is...
View ArticleThreads of Implementation — Lessons Learned from Maine
The Maine Department of Education has condensed their six case studies on districts that have embraced proficiency-based education into one article. Threads of Implementation: A Thematic Review of Six...
View ArticleWhat Do We Mean by Completion?
I always save an hour or two on Friday afternoons to read about things I don’t know much about. It’s a practice I started years ago as program director at Greater Boston Rehabilitation Services as I...
View ArticleCan Competency Education Work in Urban Districts?
I’ve been hearing this question by foundations that are excited about competency education but are focused on investing in solutions for big districts in order to reach the most low-income students....
View ArticleQuick Update from RSU2 Maine
This is a two-part series on RSU2. Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Virgel Hammonds on leadership. I crossed paths with Virgel Hammonds, Superintendent of RSU2 in Maine, on a Digital Promise...
View ArticleWhat’s New in K-12 Competency Education
CompetencyWorks released An International Study in Competency Education: Postcards from Abroad in October. You can access the archived webinar and additional resources here. We also just learned about...
View ArticleReInventing Schools at the District Level
In 2012, Maine established policy for schools to award proficiency-based diplomas starting in 2018. As the years passed, it became clear that some districts, including mine, needed more time to get all...
View ArticleMagical Mastery Tour
In October, Jeremy Krausher, Joy Nolan, and Michael Preston of Digital Ready organized what can only be called the Magical Mastery Tour. (Click here if you’d like the Beatles to accompany your...
View ArticleThe Big Three Takeaways of the Magical Mastery Tour
Although there were many takeaways from my visits to schools in New York City (what Jeremy Kraushar of the Digital Ready team referred to as the Magical Mastery Tour), I’ve selected three to write...
View ArticleExplorations in Competency Education
This post introduces the upcoming series on Chugach School District. I learned a lot during my trip to Alaska to visit Chugach School District and Highland Tech Charter School. If a moose licks his...
View ArticleDriven by Student Empowerment: Chugach School District
This is the first post in the Chugach School District series. I’ve never been to Alaska before. All I can say is that it was beyond any and all expectations – as was my visit to Chugach School District...
View ArticleSetting the PACE: Teacher Assessment Practices in a Competency-Based...
I continue to be amazed and impressed by our staff’s progress over the past five years related to our implementation of a competency-based education system. Our grading, assessment, and instructional...
View ArticleReflections on Accelerating the Implementation Process
“We have to figure out how to make implementation easy and faster.” I hear this statement from time to time and it always makes me wonder. It makes me wonder about a number of things. 1) Quality before...
View ArticleWhat’s New in K-12 Competency Education?
CompetencyWorks in the News Steps to Help Schools Transform to Competency-Based Learning, a Mind/Shift article by Katrina Schwartz, features Chris Sturgis and CompetencyWorks’ recent report:...
View ArticleA Reflection on the Field of Competency Education
Each summer, CompetencyWorks takes a bit of time to reflect on where we have come from, accomplishments, and emerging issues. Our advisory board is absolutely instrumental in this process, helping us...
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